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Outgunned by criminals, dodging bullets, stones and fireworks at protests, Caracas' Metropolitan Police are under fire from another enemy: the government of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Left-winger Chavez is threatening to take over control of the 9,000-strong autonomous force for the second time in seven months after officers used tear gas and shotgun pellets June 13 to disperse a violent stone-throwing mob of Chavez supporters.

The populist president regularly pillories the city police force, run by anti-Chavez mayor Alfredo Pena and known by its Spanish initials "PM," as a murderous, subversive band of coup plotters bent on trying to topple him.

Other regional units controlled by opposition state governors, who under the Constitution can run their own police forces, are also viewed by Chavez as hostile.

"If I have to take over these police again, I will. ... We, as the state, hold the monopoly of force," Chavez said recently.

Venezuela's police and security forces have been sucked into the political maelstrom over Chavez's rule that has kept the world's No. 5 oil exporter in turmoil for over a year.

Opponents of the soldier turned politician, first elected in 1998, have attempted a coup, a grueling two-month strike and waves of street protests to try to unseat him. They accuse him of amassing dictatorial powers in a bid to install a Cuban-style communist regime.

In this topsy-turvy world of polarized politics, Venezuela's police and security forces often appear to operate as rival armies instead of allies in preserving law and order.

'OUT OF CONTROL'

Chavez ordered the Metropolitan Police force to submit to military control last November. He accused Pena of running the force as a private army and blamed city officers for shooting dead several Chavez supporters during protests.

Opponents condemned this militarization of the force as a move by the president to neutralize hostile armed groups in the wake of an April 2002 coup that briefly toppled him.

The Supreme Court overturned the takeover five weeks later but the Caracas force is still "policed" by army detachments embedded in their stations. Police officers say their vehicles and heavy weapons have been confiscated, leaving them with only revolvers to confront heavily armed criminals.

"I think the initial move by the government may have been justified because the Metropolitan Police were a bit out of control and had weapons like heavy machine guns and even rocket launchers. But now the government may be going too far," one European diplomat observed.

Chavez's foes say that while he targets the Metropolitan Police, he uses the army, National Guard and DISIP security police to quell opposition protests and pursue political foes.

With the rival security forces all nervously eyeing each other instead of fighting lawbreakers, crime has increased by 30 percent in Caracas, already one of Latin America's most violent cities. Killings, kidnappings and robberies are rife.

"The people on the government side hate us, attack us, injure us and even kill us. ... The government is fighting us, but we are not fighting them," Caracas Metropolitan Police chief Lazaro Forero told Reuters.

Opponents of the firebrand president hail the Metropolitan officers as their only guarantee of protection against violent attacks by pro-Chavez mobs.

Forero denied his force acts as the "opposition police" and said that if his officers did not intervene to keep feuding government and opposition activists apart, there would be heavy bloodshed.

At least 50 people have been killed and several hundred injured in political violence over the past 14 months that has turned parts of Caracas and other Venezuelan cities into virtual war zones.

WHOSE SIDE ARE YOU ON?

On June 13, Caracas city officers repelled a group of pro-Chavez militants who were threatening to attack an opposition rally in a poor east Caracas neighborhood.

As National Guard troops stood by and did nothing, the pro-Chavez demonstrators threw stones, bottles and firebombs at the police and destroyed a police post, demolishing its plaster walls with clubs and setting it on fire.

"This gives the impression that the National Guard unit was protecting the government supporters," Forero said.

But Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel had a different view: "The National Guard ... acted to protect a group of citizens who were being attacked by the Metropolitan Police," he told reporters.

Rangel said nine people were injured by police gunfire. Police spokesmen said their own officers came under fire and at least one was injured.

The government condemned the holding of the opposition march in a pro-Chavez zone as a provocation.

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